


Grace Under Pressure

by sheron



Category: Agent Carter (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Lies, POV Daniel Sousa, POV Jack Thompson, POV Peggy Carter, Post-Season/Series 02, Revelations, Secrets, fall from grace
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-03
Updated: 2016-12-11
Packaged: 2018-07-19 21:35:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 20,683
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7378264
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sheron/pseuds/sheron
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Of the hundred ways Jack could confess his secret, he picks one of the worst. Daniel doesn't take it well.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you everyone for reading. Your feedback over the course of the story has meant a lot to me.  
> And a huge thank you to [Sholio](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/works) for all her help. This story wouldn't exist without her patience and enthusiasm. 
> 
> Written for the "fall from grace" prompt in my hc_bingo wildcard square.

 

"Is it true?" 

Daniel's voice over the radio mixed with static even as Peggy put the earphones on, still panting from her run back to the SSR van. She sat up straight in her seat, narrowing her eyes and giving full attention to what she had heard over the radio. Daniel sounded angry, upset. With Jack? She had no way to ask: her link to Daniel and Jack was one way. She could only hear their end of the conversation. They'd been separated for the mission, the two of them handling the exchange with the black market weapons dealer while Peggy stealthed in from the back and planted transmitters they could use to gather incriminating evidence. Her part of the plan had gone off without a hitch in half the time, so she made it back and tuned in to their conversation, which was progressing rapidly, and not in a direction Peggy liked.

"Fuck off." Even over the terrible radio connection, Jack sounded tired and stressed. Peggy's eyebrows rose of their own accord at the crude dismissal. When Daniel had wanted to come along for the active part of the mission Jack had backed him up, perhaps in the best position of them all to understand how relentless bureaucracy from behind the desk drained the soul, having experienced it recently himself, while he recovered. If anything, Peggy had expected their joined adventure to ease any remaining tension between the two men. What she was hearing over the radio however sounded like trouble.

"Tell me!" Daniel was saying, "Is it true? Did you lie to him or did you really..."

There was a long, torturous silence and Peggy bit her lip. Why hadn't Daniel finished the sentence?

"Yes, alright?" Jack's voice sounded harshly over the radio. "Is that what you want to hear? I killed them, and I hid the flag and they gave me a Navy Cross for it. Is that what you wanted me to say?"

Peggy dug her fingers into the edge of the table, but over the radio Daniel gave no response.

"I stood there while they pinned the medal on me," Jack continued, his voice harsh and angry, "and I thought: what a bunch of fools!"

"You bastard..." The side of the van shook. Peggy realized they were right outside, up against the side of the van, their argument turning physical. She threw the headphones on the table and yanked at the van's door, jumping out and finding them there, nose to nose and both furious as she'd ever seen them. Daniel had one hand on Jack's shoulder, pressing him into the colourful side of the van. "How could you..." Daniel was saying.

Before Peggy could intercede, Jack reversed the position, twisting until he could slam Daniel's shoulders against the van, shoving him back. "Fuck off! You bought into it same as them, but it was never real. None of it!" He took a step back, but she could see he was readying for another round.

"Jack!" Peggy called out, but he was on a roll now. He didn't seem to hear her at all.

"I've been waiting to say it for years," Jack said, "but I never thought if I did you'd be wearing the dumb look you're wearing now. I mean, you had to sense _some_ of this?" When Daniel just numbly shook his head, Jack said, "Then I guess you really have no idea who I am."

"That's enough!" Peggy said, coming between them now and pushing them apart with her hands on each of their shoulders. Daniel looked mostly shocked at what he'd just heard, leaning against the van where he stood, but both he and Jack were breathing heavily. Jack was shaking minutely under her hand.

He didn't meet her eyes and turned away, striding silently towards the back door of the van and getting inside.

"Come on," Peggy said to Daniel who simply stared at her, looking shocked. "We'll sort this at the office. This is too public."

He seemed to realize she was right, they were having a fight right out in the open. When they got into the van Jack was already lying on one of the benches on the side, an arm over his eyes. He could have been asleep for the projected unconcern, but Peggy didn't buy it for a moment. His lips were a thin white line, his shoulders tense.

Daniel threw one last furious glance at Jack over the back of his passenger seat while Peggy got in behind the wheel.

Once when Peggy had been very little, three or so, Michael had broken his own favourite toy rather than give it to her. She'd been following him around as usual and wanting to do everything her brother was doing, immediately and as soon as she spotted him at it. Michael had resented the little person wanting all his toys, especially since their parents saw nothing wrong with him having to share what was rightfully _his_ , so one day when she had bugged him enough he'd thrown a tantrum. He'd broken his toy so he wouldn't have to give in to her demands for it, and in the end their parents had found the two of them sobbing, both wailing inconsolably over the toy-soldier broken in half at their feet. Peggy had mostly been crying because Michael was crying. Both Peggy and Michael had learned to get along better after that incident, but Peggy had never forgotten how one person could make a seemingly irrational choice that hurt themselves most of all.  


 

* * *

 

"What he did in the war might be terrible but at least I can accept it. I did some things I wasn't exactly proud of, myself. Who am I to judge?" Daniel was pacing the floor of his office, heated words spilling out, two splotches of color on his cheeks. Peggy watched all this, her chest tight. He was really taking it hard. Daniel went on, "But the way he'd lord it over us after! The Navy Cross, his status as SSR's favourite Golden Boy. And all this time it was based on a lie!"

"Are you upset because Jack lied or because you had wanted to be more like him?" Peggy said. Falls from grace hit harder the more invested you became in the idea of the other person, and Jack had certainly polished his image until today.

Daniel stopped his pacing and swirled around, words on his tongue. They never fell and he compressed his lips for a moment, thinking. "I did, didn't I?" he said eventually. The frantic energy seemed to run out of him with that statement and he leaned heavily against his desk, setting aside his crutch. "I resented and I envied him because he got through it all and he didn't get a scratch. There were nights I lay awake thinking what my life might have been like if I'd been whole after the war..." He chuckled, a sharp sound.

Peggy walked over to him, slowly, standing next to him and hooking a hand around his elbow, leaning in until he was pressed up against her. Daniel turned to Peggy and closed his eyes, breathing her in and with it the calm that she tried to instill.

"I promise you," she said quietly, "Jack didn't walk away from it all without a scratch."

Daniel opened his eyes, looking half-way curious and half-way already knowing what she was going to say. Some things were invisible to the eye; he knew it well.

"I understand why you're angry, and," she sighed, "Jack made a hash of telling you. But you're a good man, Daniel. I think you understand that it wasn't easy for him to admit any of it, especially to you."

"He told _you_." Daniel subtly changed the subject and she let him, because the last thing she wanted was to push him any more than he'd been pushed already. "A long time ago, from what I understand."

Peggy nodded. "He told me during our mission to Belarus last year." It hadn't been her secret to share, and she knew Daniel would not begrudge her that. But he was curious, and she'd answer what she could.

"I remember thinking something was different when you came back." Daniel shook his head, exasperated with the situation, and maybe with Peggy, a little. "How did you take it? Probably better than me, huh...?" His lips curved in a wry grin and her chest eased a little. If he could joke about it, he was half-way to accepting it.

"I had a lot of time to think on the plane back," Peggy said. "We'd come from a combat situation where people lost their lives; that always seems to put things in perspective. I'd seen the way Jack acted on that mission. He took care of his people, he let everyone go first and covered our escape where he could. Whatever happened afterward didn't diminish that."

"That's Jack, alright. You can't even hate the bastard," Daniel said, and chuckled weakly at his own words. Peggy smiled too. 

"Jack is not an easy person to be friends with."

"You can say that again!" Daniel shook his head. "But I hate the way this sours everything now."

"Does it?"

"I wish I could just get over it, but I don't know if I can even look at him now without thinking about everything he told me. How he laughed at us, knowing he'd fooled everyone!"

Peggy looked away. She didn't know what had made Jack say those things, except maybe that same fear that seemed to rule him from time to time. The fear that if he didn't act to protect himself and push everyone away, the people around him would exploit every weakness he had. Daniel wasn't the person to do that, a blind man could see it, but then Jack wasn't coming from a place of rational thought. It had taken Peggy a long time to learn to read him, and it wasn't a process that she could just explain to Daniel now. He had to see it for himself.

What he needed was time and someone to listen to him work it out. Peggy could do that much.

She entwined her fingers through his and squeezed his hand. The next couple of days would be hard for everyone.  


 

* * *

 

She found Jack hiding in her dark office.

"I fucked it up," Jack said from behind her desk, leaning so far back in her chair Peggy felt like he was trying to cover behind it. 

"You didn't make it easier for yourself." She lifted an eyebrow and Jack grimaced. Peggy came closer and paused, sniffing the air. "Have you been drinking?"

"I'm not drunk," Jack avoided the question, but the answer was obvious. The smell of alcohol was in the room now that she came closer. Peggy looked around the office, but the blinds were drawn so the other SSR Agents wouldn't be seeing Jack in dereliction of duties. She sat across the desk from him and stared pointedly until he lowered his eyes and muttered, "Not nearly as drunk as I want to be right now." Now that the ruse was off, he lifted his hands from behind the desk. One held a half-empty bottle of scotch, the other a glass. They clanged when Jack set them against the table.

"That won't help anything, you know."

"What would help?" His hazel eyes met hers, and she was struck again by how much younger he looked when the masks slid away. It had been an honest question, a plea for help. "Because I've been wracking my brain for _anything_..." Jack put a hand to his forehead, staring at a far wall, clearly not seeing it, the very picture of misery. If he'd let Daniel see him like this, maybe it would have done half the work for him because Peggy's heart went out to him now.

"Start by not making it look like you reveled in lying to him," Peggy said firmly. "It isn't true, and it only serves to hurt you both."

Jack only reached again for the drink, ignoring Peggy's frown as he poured himself another finger of scotch. 

After a moment of trying to project disapproval, she sighed. "Have you got another glass on you?"

Jack looked up in surprise, lips splitting into a smile when he made the connection. He shook his head no, he only had the one glass he'd been drinking from, so Peggy reached for the bottle and Jack pushed it towards her across the desk. He watched while Peggy took a sip, cringing a little at the taste, and set it back down on the table between them.

"I thought you'd be on his side," he said quietly. With their eyes meeting, she saw how he'd pictured it: the loyal girlfriend standing by her man and throwing away whatever rapport the two of them had built over the years because it didn't matter. But it did, all of it mattered, and Peggy wasn't that sort of a friend. Jack said in earnest, "But you are here, with me."

"I'm not taking sides," Peggy said. "As tempting as it is to knock your foreheads together and stop this nonsense I can't actually do _that_ either."

"If I thought letting him hit me would make him feel better..."

"Oh, now you're just self-flagellating." Exasperation crept into her voice: it was like he purposefully found the least useful solution for everything. "You missed the chance to tell him calmly, so he'd listen, and introducing more emotion on top of everything could only make it worse."

"Because everything is logical in Peggy's world," Jack said bitterly. "Don't you think I looked for a better way to tell him?" He looked away, distant in the memory. "But he was saying things and it was like my brain switched off. I laid into him when he least deserved it and doesn't that just put a bow on things."

"You can fix it," Peggy said, certain he was clever enough, even if he made it difficult to keep in mind, at times. She stood up and walked over to the other side of the desk, pulling at his arm above the elbow to make him rise. "C'mon, I don't think sitting here in the dark drinking is doing you any good."

Jack rose, and wavered on his feet. He was a lot more drunk that she'd assumed, which startled her because his speech didn't slur one bit and until that moment she'd never have thought it. She was going to ask him if he'd make it, wondering if she needed to lend a hand after all, but Jack straightened and got his balance, and the signs disappeared again. He just looked so _normal_.

"Let's go, I'll drive you to your place," Peggy said.

Jack reached out and took her hand by the fingers, surprising her and making her look down at where he held it with his own, larger hand. He squeezed her fingers in gratitude, and took a shaky breath before nodding and following her outside.  


 


	2. Chapter 2

 

It was going to be a long day.

The effects of last night's self-indulgent drinking were not to blame for the ill feeling in his stomach as Jack leaned against the wall of Daniel's office. He crossed his arms on his chest, pressed his back to the wall with the appearance of casual indifference, and still felt entirely too exposed. He'd had that feeling a lot lately and it just made him want to snap at things.

Daniel had yet to look at him.

Somehow, this was worse than any amount of rebuke Jack might have read in his eyes. Daniel was trying to carry on with business as usual, his basic decency allowing Jack safety while they were at work. They had to wrap up the case against the black marketeers, and neither of them would think to shrink from duty. The atmosphere in Daniel's office, however, was frosty when Peggy walked in. She glanced between the two of them and took the other chair.

Jack had updated Peggy on the events of last night while she drove him to his place. Together with Daniel, they had secured a deal to exchange the weapons for cash. It would go down today. Getting on the bad guys good side had required playing a bad guy himself, and Jack had thrown caution to the wind, using the truth for once to play the opportunist, out to make a buck. He'd played his cards on impulse, figuring Daniel wouldn't think twice about the cover story being true, except he had forgotten Daniel's dogged persistence. His brilliant mind. In short, he'd been delusional to imagine it would go anything but the way it had: to hell in a hand-basket.

The sound of Daniel's pen scratching the desk through the paper was loud in the tense silence of the office. Watching him, Jack couldn't help the words that fell from his lips; he hadn't meant to be the first to speak.

"There's no reason for both of us to show this time." Jack kept his temper in check, his voice smooth. "He's been given to understand I have a backup. I can go it on my own." He felt obligated to give Daniel an out.

"No, that's fine. I'll go," Daniel said quietly, still without looking at him. He was shuffling the papers on the desk, as though he cared where they lay. Jack stared at him for a long moment, hurt surfacing, hot and impulsive when he wanted to keep calm.

"Don't do me any favours." Jack pushed away from the wall, feeling his fingers curl into fists. "If you're coming with, we meet out-front in an hour." 

He couldn't remain in that room any longer, it wasn't safe. For a second, he met Peggy's eyes, letting her see his gratitude for the way she didn't take sides. Then Jack strode out. The door of the office hit the wall and bounced off in a way that still failed to satisfy.

Daniel didn't come after him as he might have in the past and Jack tried not to let it get under his skin. It meant nothing. This was over. There was business to get through, as professionally and as thoroughly as they could manage and then...

Jack's long legs carried him across the office and outside. He passed by Rose's empty desk trying not to wonder how she would look at him if she knew. It didn't matter. Since the war he'd lived with the expectation that other's knowledge of his terrible actions would one day cost him everything. Peggy aside, he'd actually gotten away with it longer than he'd ever thought possible. The secret had gnawed at him day in, day out, until remaining silent about it seemed more tortuous than any consequence he could face. He was exhausted from fearing Daniel's judgment, from longing for it.

The pathetic futility of wanting his company, and even ― Jack could admit it to himself now that every chance of it was lost ― his friendship was almost amusing to him now. He felt a bitter laugh bubble up in his throat and contained it, striding along the streets of Los Angeles, aiming only to put space between himself and the SSR office. He didn't care about the oppressive heat. He'd long since gotten used to the uncomfortable days out in the blazing sun. Jack wondered, momentarily, why he'd stayed long enough for that to be true.

But he couldn't pretend he didn't know the answer. Long after he was physically capable of returning to New York to claw back whatever position he might still have at the SSR Headquarters, long past any hope of finding the lead on his shooter in L.A., he'd stayed because for one ineffable moment he had actually imagined that he could be accepted here, understood in a way that only a kindred spirit could understand his confused soul. It had been a near irresistible longing. Being on his own hadn't been enough.

 _You can fix it._ Peggy's words echoed hollowly in his memory. What was there to fix? They had never been kindred; they were as different as planets in the sky, orbiting their sun.

Daniel wouldn't have experienced Jack leaving as any great loss. His cool tolerance, his polite indifference cut worse than a knife. Jack had seen him get more furious about Samberly's simple lab mistakes; even _that_ provoking more emotion than Daniel had shown him today.

Why _hadn't_ Jack left? The simplicity of it nearly took his breath away and he stopped on the corner of a street, right in a path of some delivery man who had to swerve around him. It would be easy to leave now.

At once, Jack felt lighter. He whirled around and began to walk back, re-energized. The near crushing hopelessness receded, it became easier to breathe. He'd finish tonight's job, of course, but after that he needn't stay in L.A. any longer. Peggy, no stranger to leaving the past behind, would understand. He had dreaded the loneliness of New York office before, but it would suit him very well now. Nobody there who knew him half-as-well. He could rebuild.

What if that didn't sit well with Daniel though? For a moment he could picture his anger that Jack still got to have his position back, the responsibility and the power he didn't deserve in Daniel's eyes. The thought brought near malicious satisfaction. He had enough dirt on Daniel to bury them both if it came to that, and for a moment Jack wanted to play those odds and watch it all go up in flames. The image of Daniel, destroyed at the same time as him, played before his eyes. But it cut a little close to the bone, and as hard as he tried, he couldn't hold on to the wicked delight.

Anger was easier. Shivering, dangerous anger was still kindling inside him. He would bank it; he could use it to push himself to do what had to be done. Jack wrenched the door of the theatrical agency open, noting Rose sit up straight at the sight of his face, and moved deeper inside the offices.

Peggy appeared out of nowhere and yanked him by the elbow into one of the empty rooms.

"Are you thinking clearly about the job?" she said, first and foremost concerned with the mission. He loved that about Peggy.

Actually, now that he'd made his decision, he was oddly looking forward to tonight. One last team run before he made his long-overdue departure. A chance to play the hero again and rid the world of more scum. Jack nodded. "You'll be in the truck outside?"

"Listening on the radio. Signal if you need me to create a diversion."

"We've got it covered." He glanced towards Daniel's office. "Is he still sulking in there?"

Peggy tilted her head and narrowed her eyes at him, evaluating.

"What?" Jack played the innocent.

"Nothing," she said after a second, sounding thoughtful. But the moment passed and her tone turned businesslike and brisk: "You both should probably wear vests under the suits."

"And spoil the lines?" Jack gave a toothy grin to her eye-roll. "We have them eating out of the palms of our hands. Just about ready to deliver them along with the evidence into lockup once we know who the backer is."

"Don't overplay your hand," Peggy warned. "And," her eyes softened, "try to take it easy on both of you."

He was leaving. This time tomorrow he would be on the plane East. Why prolong the misery?

His relationship with Daniel was like a gangrenous patient: gasping along in agony yet holding on to the dead limb, when a quick, clean cut would serve to heal the wound faster in the long run. Jack felt a self-deprecating smile stretch his lips. Maybe Daniel had already realized as much.

"Roger that."  


 


	3. Chapter 3

 

Silent in the truck, silent when they got out. The ride to the meeting place passed by in a half-hour of awkward uncertainty with only Peggy making a few comments about the mission.

She gave each of them a shrewd look before they left, saying only: "Be careful."

Daniel gave her a weak smile while Jack tipped his hat and nodded understanding.

The meet was in the cellar of a distillery business owned by the head-honcho of their little racket, Karl. He'd surprised Daniel by turning out to be a successful businessmen exporting California wine and other hard liquor, and making money on the side with his black-market business, rather than a down-on-his luck criminal, happy with any dollar bill thrown his way that Daniel had been picturing until they met. That wealth had led to a much higher price-tag on his services than Daniel was comfortable with sacrificing to the job, but apparently the SSR higher-ups were alright with trading a briefcase of money for some of the goodies Karl was selling, if only to get them off the market as quickly as possible. They'd considered simply arresting the man, but the risk of losing the strenuous connection to his suppliers led them down the more convoluted path they were exploring now, playing disillusioned government agents out for their own gain.

The liquor export business no doubt played a role in the supply chain Karl had set up. Jack and Daniel made their way through the concrete back parking lot that was abandoned over the weekend and entered the inner courtyard.

"His assistant, Sasha, could be a weak link." 

Jack gave a non-committal shrug in response, staring straight ahead.

They'd gone over this before the first meeting, but repeating the information set Daniel more at ease, knowing they weren't forgetting anything. Dealing with these people the first time had been unpleasant, Karl was a creep and Sasha did whatever the man ordered without engaging his own brain. At least Jack and Daniel were armed. Karl and Sasha hadn't insisted on anything except that they come alone. Killing them wouldn't get the SSR anything but two dead bodies and a media furor. Killing two government agents would start a witch-hunt Karl wasn't interested in. The weapons were purely a mutual peace bond.

From their research into the man, Karl seemed like someone to watch out for, a man with a hair-trigger temper. In many ways he reminded Daniel of Manfredi, even though he came from a different background of family wealth. Karl didn't hold on to assistants for long, Sasha having been the one to stay longest. They'd worked together for two years. It was reasonable to assume Sasha knew enough about Karl's business that leaning on him could give them what they wanted.

Daniel thought about Jack's silence. They hadn't talked much at the SSR office either, just grunts and nods before they were on their way. The most Jack had said was that he was looking forward to this job being over, which had Peggy making concerned expressions at him, but to Daniel seemed like a clear play for her sympathy. Currently, Jack's body language was as standoffish as Daniel had ever seen. He had to work hard to keep up with the man as they made their way across the yard. Jack seemed determined to leave him behind. Which was bullshit.

"When we walk in there," Daniel said, "we're on the same side. We can't behave like enemies."

"What are you saying?" Jack bristled. But he seamlessly slowed his pace to let Daniel catch up.

"Whatever crap is between us we set it aside until this job is done." Daniel was saying this as much to himself as to Jack, because whatever roiling emotions yesterday's revelation had brought up, they didn't have a place on the mission. In Daniel's head last night he'd imagined himself struggling the most to play nice -- out of the two of them Jack seemed to be the better one at compartmentalizing. It surprised Daniel that Jack wasn't doing that successfully today: his general attitude and occasional bursts of clear anger back at the office revealing chinks in his armor Daniel hadn't been prepared to see. Hadn't even thought existed. But Daniel had a scientist's mindset and when evidence presented itself, even if it didn't agree with his prior hypothesis, he had to take it into account. Jack was taking what happened even harder than Daniel was, for whatever reason.

Jack muttered mulishly, "You don't have to worry about me." 

"Why don't you let me decide that for myself," Daniel snapped. "We are doing this together until it's over. We don't have to like it, but we have to deal with it."

"Can't wait to get me out of your hair, huh?" Jack chuckled. "No problem."

Daniel turned this over in his head and suddenly stopped walking, his mind making the leap between two points. It felt so obvious he couldn't believe he hadn't seen it until now. The next solution for a person like Jack who was miserably failing at stowing the baggage wouldn't be to confront it head on but rather to remove himself from the triggering situation entirely.

Jack went a few paces without him before he realized there was a problem and turned back with an irritated, "What?"

Daniel was sure a nearly comical expression was on his face. "You're leaving."

Some turbulent emotion flashed in the hazel eyes for a second, before Jack's expression smoothed out again. He said nothing.

"Just like that?"

Jack looked back down the way they'd been walking, as though considering if they had time for this. But Daniel couldn't just let it go, now that he knew. Every tiny alarm bell set off by Jack's behaviour so far, all the little inconsistencies, had finally clued him in to the reason. Jack had already decided, and was simply plodding along until this job was done and over with. Then he'd be gone.

Jack turned to look at him. Said bleakly, "Haven't you had enough?"

That confirmed it. Daniel's throat seized at the desperate undertones in those words, their finality. The last time he'd heard Jack sound like that he had been staring down Peggy, shouting about having to kill Wilkes along with the rest of them, convinced enough of his decisions that he was willing to stake his life on it. Daniel had stood frozen then too, the unexpected revelation of everything he thought Jack wasn't -- desperate, fierce -- coming over him in waves. It happened now as well. At the office, Jack had been so marvelously convincing that tonight was just business as usual that Daniel had forgotten for a moment that the man was a consummate liar. The new reality, his new view of Jack kept blind-siding him. He didn't know how to work with it because it was so unfamiliar.

Or maybe Jack was lying now with his body-language. What was the angle? Daniel couldn't figure it out, but that didn't mean the con wasn't there. Jack was always on the lookout of how to get people to do whatever he wanted. Daniel had to guard himself against it; wasn't it Jack himself who'd pointed out his gullible need to project his own feelings on others? Maybe Jack looked uncomfortable because Daniel wanted him to be, wanted him to have the decency to care and be upset about everything that went down. Maybe in reality Jack was playing yet another role, polishing the performance that would be award-worthy.

He'd stood silent for too long. Jack read whatever he expected in his frozen silence, and turned back around again, starting to walk at a slow pace as though waiting for him to catch up on his bad leg. "Let's go," Jack said, quiet and hostile, "We don't want to keep them waiting."

Caught between the conflicting desire to press for more and the nervous suspicion that he would be playing right into Jack's hands, Daniel stayed silent and joined him walking down the hallway. He had to get his mind back on the job. They were on this mission together, and Jack had offered to go alone but Daniel insisted on accompanying him. That meant he owed it to the man to do a thorough job of it, which meant that for the time-being at least he had to heed his own words, set his doubts aside, and treat Jack as he would any other member of the team.

Attempting focus, Daniel said, "We are almost there." The building was abandoned, as they'd agreed yesterday. Only Karl and Sasha would be in the cellar down the stairs, ready to make a trade. Radio waves didn't penetrate that far down, through the thick walls of the basement. The bugs that Peggy had planted earlier would have to be manually collected and their recording examined after the fact.

"Nice setup," Jack muttered, "None of his employees have any idea what goes on in this place on weekends."

Daniel nodded. The cover for Karl's business was a legitimate distillery, and in their investigation (with Peggy undercover as an inspector) nobody had any idea that this building served as a meet for all kinds of corrupt elements betraying their own country.

Daniel tried not to think too hard about what motivated a man like Karl. His mind curled in on itself whenever he tried to picture it. He cast about for something else as they descended the stairs to the basement single-file, in complete solitude, with only dry crumbling brick surrounding them on each side.

Immediately, his attention circled back to latch onto the thought of Jack leaving again. It wasn't fair. Jack dropped his bombshell and Daniel's whole perception of him had done a U-turn, and now he was leaving without giving Daniel any chance to reconcile everything in his head. Maybe it had taken Peggy less time to figure things out -- she said she'd had time to think on the plane back from Belarus -- but she was so much better with people and Daniel felt horribly rushed. How was he supposed to just pick and choose what to believe without having time to work through it and examine all the shared moments they'd had for shreds of truth among the lies.

But he couldn't follow through on that thought; they'd reached the end of the hall and it was game time. Daniel pushed the door open first, coming through and assessing the situation before Jack, ostensibly the leader of their two-man operation stepped through inside the large concrete cellar. Numerous crates, no doubt holding liquor bottles lined the walls in tidy groups, labeled haphazardly with incomprehensible lingo. A number of unprotected light-bulbs swung overhead, illuminating the space with a weak yellow light.

Karl was on the other end of the room, arms on his rotund hips, expecting them. Dark haired and blue-eyed, he stretched his meaty lips in a parody of a welcoming smile.

A body, glassy eyes staring at the ceiling, brought them up short. Sasha, or the man he'd been once, lay unmoving at Karl's feet.

"What happened to him?" Jack said without inflection.

"He disappointed me." Karl smiled, humourless. He rubbed his hands together, and Daniel's eyes were involuntarily drawn to his thick, sausage-like fingers. He couldn't see if there were marks on Sasha's throat from where they stood, but he felt comfortable assuming Karl had done the strangling with his bare hands. "But I'm sure you two won't do that," their host continued with chilling calm. "Have you brought the money?"

"Here," Jack indicated the case he held in his hand. The casual cruelty in front of him didn't seem to shake him any, and Daniel tried to gather himself, matching Jack's assured body language with his own.

Karl looked from the briefcase to Jack. "You'll forgive me if I count it."

"Not at all," Jack said. "It'll give us time to examine our purchase."

With another creepy, self-confident smirk, Karl motioned at the duffel-bag a this feet, next to Sasha's head. He kicked the bag over their way, making Daniel wince. If any of the items inside weren't packaged properly... Daniel's concerned expression seemed to only amuse Karl.

Jack walked over and handed Karl the briefcase with cash, who immediately set it on one of the wooden crates nearby and opened it. Jack, meanwhile, brought the duffel-bag to where Daniel stood watching over the situation and trying not to shiver. It wasn't the chill in the air, it was the company.

"It's so good to do business with you law-enforcement folks," Karl said with ugly self-satisfaction. "You always keep your promises."

"Now, you know that isn't true," Jack said with a matching smile. He'd performed the song and dance for Karl's sake earlier and had the man convinced they weren't the most upstanding members of their profession by the end of his sales pitch. Daniel hated that the only reason he knew anything of Jack's past was the asshole black-marketeer in front of him, but he was grateful too, for the way his eyes had been opened.

Jack had rifled through the bag. "It's all here," he said when Daniel glanced down for confirmation. He rose back to his feet, saying to Karl. "Pleasure doing business."

"Wasn't it?" Karl said. "Though we'd only concluded a small portion of our business relationship. I'm hoping our future holds...more."

"What, you've got more to give?" Jack prompted, slight disbelief carefully inserted into his question. They knew that Karl was dealing with a lot more than a duffel-bag. Part of the mission was to find an in with him, find out where the suppliers were. The items they got today would be going to the SSR labs, where techs would turn them inside out trying to figure out who'd manufactured the pieces they had on hand. According to the rumour in the underworld there was a lot more that Karl had been keeping back from them at this initial trade.

Karl couldn't have assuaged his ego if he tried. "Much more, much more."

Jack pretended to look at Daniel for agreement, glance sliding over Daniel's face and their eyes never meeting, before turning to Karl. "Keep talking."

Karl stared at them silently for a moment, then appeared to come to a decision, his little eyes flaring with malicious glee. "Well, you two seem to have me at a disadvantage." The familiar ugly grin stretched his lips, "I've lost my little assistant here," he kicked at the body lightly with a heel without looking down, "but there's two of you and there's one little old me. How about we change the odds, hmm?"

"I've got a lot more to show you at another location. One of you come with me." He glanced between them both, hard-eyed. "Unarmed."

Daniel chuckled at the ridiculous suggestion.

Jack's "Fine," came quiet and intense from next to him and Daniel twisted his head to look at him.

"What?"

Jack wasn't looking at Daniel, he was staring at Karl, matching his little smirk with a derisive curl to his own lips. "I'm open to having a conversation. You go back, Sousa."

"You're everything you've led me to believe," Karl said. "A reasonable man, I can do business with. I like that." 

"What are you on about?" Daniel twisted to face him fully, and saw the expression in Jack's eyes. It seemed intensely familiar. "You can't seriously consider going alone!"

Jack sounded bored. "At least there'll be a meaning to my being here. Go back, Sousa."

Karl smiled at them, a scornful twist of lips, amused by their disagreement. "You two sort it out among yourselves." He turned and walked away unconcernedly to the far corner of the room, giving them space. The cellar was sufficiently large that he could move far enough away he wouldn't overhear them talk. Daniel watched Karl out of the corner of his eyes, most of his mind on Jack who looked terrifyingly remote.

Daniel moved closer to him. "You can't be thinking about going with this psychopath!" He hissed at an undertone he hoped didn't carry in the echoing chamber, "You see what he did with his henchman? You can't trust that kind of a man to do anything he says."

"You have a better idea?" Jack glared down his nose, speaking at the same low volume.

"Yes!" He couldn't believe this conversation. The path ahead seemed so obvious to him, he couldn't understand why Jack with all his intelligence wasn't seeing it equally clearly. "We leave with what we've got. We keep track of those bugs Peggy planted and get him that way. Maybe come back another time--" He cut off, glanced Karl's way, but the man was disinterestedly examining his own liquor merchandise, giving them their space. He seemed utterly sure of himself in a way that Daniel found uniquely repulsive.

"In the meantime he's free to contact any other buyers or use the wares himself," Jack said in an undertone. "You're still thinking like a soldier, Sousa: linear. Let me handle this. Go back to Peggy." He made a move towards Karl.

"No." Daniel reached out and grabbed him by the elbow, stopping Jack in his tracks. He didn't abandon his attempts to be quiet, "You are not leaving with him. It's suicide."

"It's a controlled risk," Jack growled, trying to yank his arm out of Daniel's grasp but Daniel had all the upper body strength to keep hold of him. This made Jack really mad. "We don't have time for your _hysterics_."

"We don't have time for you to throw yourself at danger for no good reason," Daniel said. "What is this? Some kind of repentance? Some kind of a show of pointless heroism to make all the other ugliness worth it?" He felt a shiver up his spine at the expression that crossed Jack's face. "It is?" The words fell out with quiet surprise. 

Daniel stared at Jack, seeing things he hadn't before. Jack glared back: the expression of being found out was gone but he couldn't quite pull up his mask of indifference anymore. His eyes gave him away, looking torn and raw.

"Let go," Jack said shortly and yanked at his elbow. "I can do this easy, Sousa. I didn't survive all that for nothing."

Daniel remembered watching Jack in the hospital bed after the shooting, four am, rediscovering his abandoned religion praying to anyone who'd listen that he'd wake up. His throat closed in a mess of frustrated emotion and he thought absurdly about the two of them back in that truck with Peggy, not talking. They should have used their time together better. They should have spoken about all this crap before setting off on a mission that could easily go pear shaped. It was arrogant and stupid, and Daniel was done with it.

Whatever Jack read in his silence he must have thought he was finally getting through to Daniel, because he said, desperation softening his voice, "This way what I do makes a difference."

"And it didn't already?" Daniel cried out at the level of a hiss. "How fucked up are you that you think that's the way to play this?"

Jack used all his strength to yank himself away from Daniel's grip, and turned to Karl.

"Let's go," he said, full volume.

"No," Daniel answered him immediately. "You are not leaving with him, Jack. Not even if I have to shoot you in the leg to keep you here."

In the back corner, Karl laughed at the theater. Jack turned his head to glare at Daniel, but all that Daniel did was draw his own pistol and wave it genially at Jack. "I'm not kidding. I'll shoot you before I let you pull this crap. Sort it out later." He grinned, humourless at the expression of fury that slid into Jack's eyes. It was better than what he'd glimpsed before.

"Well, it seems, my friend, that we are out of luck," Karl said to Jack. "I guess the negotiation is over." He presented an image of unconcern but if Daniel had gotten any good at reading him over the time spent in his presence, then he could see a barely contained frustration in Karl's little blue eyes. It warmed Daniel's heart.

"We'll be going now," Daniel said firmly. "Bye."

"Sousa--"

"Shut up," Daniel growled. "We'll talk about this later."

Jack had enough sense to know that any delay only exposed them both to more danger. He controlled himself with visible effort and turned to go back the way they came. At least he had the presence of mind to grab the weapon's bag at their feet, because Daniel had no spare hand to hold it and they weren't leaving it behind. Daniel kept his piece in Karl's view the whole time, never pointing it at the man, even as he made a side-ways shuffle towards the exit. He shut the door behind him.

"This isn't over," Jack said, fuming, as they walked back the way they came.

No, it wasn't. 

  


	4. Chapter 4

 

Peggy lost their radio signal when they went underground. As far as longest radio silences of her life it wasn't the worst, but she felt a tension between her shoulders that betrayed her nervousness about the situation. Still, she couldn't only trust Jack and Daniel when trust came easily, she had to trust them even when the going got tough.

She'd been witness to some of their argument that took place above ground, in the concrete yard of the distillery. Daniel's guess about Jack leaving dropped like a stone inside the lake of her consciousness and Peggy couldn't claim any surprise. It had been as though she had already known, deep down, even as a sense of frustrated disappointment at being right followed on the heels of the realization. Jack had never been easy to get along with, but a camaraderie had built up between them like a fire, lit that dark night in Europe, and just as unpredictable, but warm at its core. She wanted to keep it.

These thoughts occupied the periphery of her mind even as she considered tasks and angles more relevant to the mission at the forefront of her brain. So Peggy straightened in her seat and pushed the slipping ear-piece closer into her ear when she heard something other than static again. They were outside again, coming back much faster than expected. The communication was only one-way, and she dearly wished to find out the reason for the heavy silence. They'd planned to appeal to Karl (Jack's job) and maybe see if there was an angle to play with Karl's assistant Sasha (Daniel's), so to have them come back early was a dangerous surprise. Something hadn't gone according to plan. Peggy checked her holster for the presence of her gun and left the truck to meet them half-way.

She crept up along the fence, keeping out of view of any vantage points. Karl was a businessman and one who didn't keep many people in his inner pose, so an observer keeping an eye on the empty yard was unlikely. Peggy slipped through one of the side-entrances and used the tree shade to sneak to where she could see the two men stride across the yard out in plain view. Despite her knowledge there wouldn't be anyone up there, Peggy nervously checked the windows near the roof. A sniper could sight their target on either of the men easily, even in the evening dusk, they both wore dark suits and white (in Daniel's case: patterned) office shirts that glared with their starched whiteness like beacons. She moved to a closer hiding spot behind a crumbling outcrop of an inner wall, and she felt both of them pause in their stride, Jack's hand flying to his weapon. Daniel's gun, Peggy realized, was already out.

She shouldn't have underestimated them: they'd both fought on the front-lines and some habits were hard to break. Peggy stepped out from behind the crumbling brick, waving and watched Jack lower his hand back down, no longer treating her as an unexpected intruder. After a moment, Daniel stowed his weapon as well, looking reluctant and glancing at Jack with what looked like concern. Seeing the worried cast to his face was a significant enough change from the way Daniel hadn't been able to so much as look at Jack earlier in the day that Peggy turned to Jack for an explanation. Jack looked fine, the icy-cold stare of his eyes meeting hers without emotion when the two men came closer. Of course, that cold rage of his had been something that Peggy (somewhat to her own embarrassment) had provoked enough times to be instantly recognizable.

"What happened?" Peggy asked when they came closer.

Daniel opened his mouth, but Jack overrode him with a growl, "Karl offered to bring me in on something but _he_ screwed it up."

"I find that difficult to believe..." Peggy said to Daniel, who looked off to the side with the air of someone reaching into their limited reserves of patience.

"Believe it!" Jack snarled, some of the ice leaving his eyes to be transformed into a more fiery kind of anger. "Your boyfriend threatened to shoot me if I went with Karl."

"Sasha's dead," Daniel explained to Peggy's startled blink. "I wasn't going to let―"

"You are not my boss," Jack barked, swirling to face him with a sharp movement and drawing up to full height as though it would intimidate Daniel. He set the duffel-bag in his hand down so it wouldn't distract him. "You aren't even my mother, although between you and Carter I am starting to doubt."

"Easy there," Peggy cautioned, before turning to Daniel. "Why couldn't Jack go with Karl?" It seemed like a perfectly sensible move to Peggy if she'd been in his place. That was the whole point of the little operation, to get Karl to slip up and reveal who the backer was and Jack could talk a slick talk if given some amount of rope.

Daniel looked almost exasperated by her honest question. "Because, playing lone ranger with a psychopath who just killed one of his own doesn't tend to work out, Peggy. I thought we'd covered that."

Sometimes she needed reminding. Whitney Frost had really been a learning experience as far as understanding where Daniel was coming from was concerned, and Peggy tended to think his way safer overall. Jack was clearly not ready to hear anything of the sort at present, however.

"I was the one who was working him," Jack said, just low enough to be kept between the three of them, rather than echoing far and wide. Peggy checked the perimeter but they were still ostensibly alone. Jack was practically nose to nose with Daniel now, who stood his ground with a deceptively relaxed pose, and a white knuckle grip on his crutch. Jack snarled, "He'll never respect me or give me the time of day after that little power play."

" _That_ was saving your ass back there," Daniel said, "but if you want power-play how's this: I'm the Chief here and you're a guest in my backyard. You'll follow my orders as long as you're in L.A. or I'll have you arrested for insubordination."

Jack's mouth actually fell open for a second as he stared at the other man, stunned, and Peggy thought Daniel might have taken his speech a little too far. But much as she wanted to, she couldn't interfere in their fight. Jack would read too much into it, and Daniel? He didn't need her fighting his battles for him. That was one of those things they had in common. She hadn't actually given a lot of thought to Jack's jurisdiction while on the West Coast: he was still technically her boss although they'd long since trampled over any official lines in their own relationship. Besides, Daniel only pulled this kind of stunt to make a point, and Peggy watched out for the shadows in the yard to make sure nobody else took the fight to them while they sorted this out. 

Therefore, she was distracted for the moment it took Jack to grip Daniel by the front of his shirt with his one hand, and shove him back into the crumbling brick wall behind them. Daniel didn't resist. He had a knowing, nearly smug cant to his mouth.

"Do you want to hit me? Come on," he said quietly, calmly despite the red splotches on his cheeks that revealed nerves. "You've been spoiling for it all day."

Jack, far from pacified by this taunt, drew his other arm back.

Daniel said with deadly softness, "Go ahead. Make it look good."

And Jack threw his punch. For a second, Peggy had thought he was aiming for Daniel's nose, who stood still with his eyes open and watched Jack's fist land into the stone brick next to his face. Jack's face flashed with a mix of pain and a more complicated emotion, and he pushed Daniel away by the lapels of the shirt, turning from him and cradling his right hand to his chest.

"Fuck off, Sousa," he said after a moment, all anger gone from his tone. He didn't seem to care about swearing in front of Peggy. The tension that had been in his stance earlier leaked out as well, and behind him, Daniel straightened his shirt with shaking fingers that betrayed the casualness of the move. He looked nearly triumphant. Peggy could see as clear as day in his face: he'd proved something to himself that she wasn't privy to. He gave her a tentative smile and a shrug, as though to apologize for making her watch. Peggy sighed and rolled her eyes. What had she ever done in the past life to deserve this?

"Shall we take this show off the most direct route from the distillery and try to salvage what's left of the plan?" Peggy nodded to her own question, "Yes, let's." She glanced towards Jack figure, still with his back to them. "How is your hand?"

"Fine," Jack said with studied casualness, which probably meant he'd broken it again. The bones, once broken, never retained the same structural integrity and Jack always punched with his right hand, layering stress-fracture upon stress fracture.

"There's a first-aid kit in the truck," Peggy said simply.

They made a slow progress to the vehicle, Peggy walking between the two men who both stared straight ahead. Jack had stubbornly picked up the duffel-bag with his healthy hand and carried it all the way to the truck, setting it down gently in the corner, before climbing into the back, with Daniel following him, after giving Peggy a brief nod. She went around to the driver side and once seated turned around to see into the back. She had a responsibility to make sure they didn't kill each other.

Jack was sitting on one benches. He was still cradling his hand and Peggy could see his knuckles were bleeding visibly. He was staring blankly at the opposite wall and hadn't even made a move for the first-aid kit. Peggy was about to reluctantly offer to bandage his hand up, when she noticed that Daniel was already on it.

He came to stand in front of Jack, a fresh bandage clenched in his fist. "Hold out your hand," Daniel said quietly.

Jack lifted his eyes from where they'd been fixed on the wall. He blinked, and held out his hand with bleeding knuckles. Didn't say a word. Just handed it right over to the man who'd threatened to shoot him earlier and whose nose he had wanted to break a few minutes ago. Peggy would never understand men.

Daniel had been angling for a simple bandaging job, but as soon as his fingers took hold of Jack's palm, Jack made a low sound of startled pain. He'd tried to hide it, but Daniel gave him an assessing glance and visibly reevaluated his diagnosis.

"That hurts?" he queried with the detached observation of a person used to diagnosing similar injuries. He probed in a few more places with his fingers before concluding, "You broke it, then." Jack stared transfixed at his own hand, held by Daniel's gentle fingers.

"There's dry-ice pack in the kit," Peggy threw over her shoulder, starting the car's engine and touching off smoothly so she wouldn't cause Daniel any hardship standing. She knew as soon as Daniel offered to fix Jack's hand that things were looking up for the two of them. Jack only had to trust him a little; Daniel wouldn't let him down.

Whatever Daniel had wanted to know out in the yard when he'd provoked Jack into attacking, it had settled some question inside him. Jack seemed to sense it too. When Peggy managed to look over her shoulder, Daniel was sitting on the bench next to Jack in the close confines of the truck, furthest away from the front, handing Jack the ice-pack to put on his hand.

"It's your own fault for not pulling your punches," Daniel said, an almost joking tone to his words. When Peggy glanced back, he was brushing his rib-cage with a pointed look, and Jack's lips curling up with a self-deprecating twist. He looked almost, if she could trust her eyes, relieved.

"You're right," Jack said slowly, as though the words tasted strangely on his tongue. Daniel of course picked up on it like a dog with a bone to pick.

"Did I hear that correctly?"

"Oh, fuck off already," Jack said, without any heat. "Even a broken clock, et cetera." He closed his eyes. "Fuck, my hand hurts."

Peggy bit her lower lip so she wouldn't let off a smile.

And that's when the duffel-bag exploded with a white light and a shower of sparks.

 


	5. Chapter 5

  

The world was a cacophony of sound.

Jack first cracked open his eyes to obnoxious ringing in his ears, like someone performing a loud musical number. By the time he got his eyes to focus on the grey ceiling above, Jack was already trying to move his limbs, feeling along the floor with shaky hands. Memory returned along with a wave of dread. He was lying on his back on what appeared to be the wall of the truck, which seemed to have rolled over. Daniel's hand was thrown over Jack's neck, its senseless weight crushing his windpipe. Daniel was lying face down next to him, unmoving.

The last thing Jack remembered was Daniel throwing him to the floor at the moment of the explosion, covering him from the blast. Goddamn, it would be just like him to die heroically saving Jack's life after everything.

Jack pushed the hand off his throat, gulping-in air. The ringing in his ears wasn't any better and when he lifted a hand to feel the warm trickle on one side, he realized it was blood. His chest felt like one large bruise, probably from where Daniel's weight had crashed into him as the shock-wave of the explosion tried to make a Jack-sized dent in the metal frame of the truck. He dared to lift his head, wincing against the piercing sharp pain in his ears. Jack could feel his toes, which was a blessing. Besides his previously broken hand, he didn't see anything wrong with himself. Despite the splitting pain in his ears, Jack managed to roll over on the side, shifting his holstered gun which dug painfully into his hip, and reached for Daniel's carotid pulse at the neck. 

Simultaneously, his eyes tried to take in the chaos inside the vehicle. The small explosion had torn through the back of the truck, bending the back door so that Jack could see fading twilight from outside through the ragged holes in it. He hadn't been unconscious for long, then. The explosive had been relatively small, or they would have been torn apart, and as far as he could see they appeared to be alone at present. His highest priority was ascertaining the status of the others.

He felt Daniel's pulse beat under his fingers, and had to rest his head against the truck's wall for a second. A moment of weakness over, Jack scrambled to his hands and knees, shaking Daniel's shoulder trying to wake him. He was afraid to roll the man over in case he had any back injuries from the contusive force of the blast. After a moment, as Jack's eyes roamed over Daniel's prostrate body, he realized that there could be no turning him over in any case. One of Daniel's legs was pinned painfully under the twisted metal of what used to be a bench. The rough iron edges had pierced through the pant-leg at the calf and from the blood surrounding the area, Jack could tell it wasn't the leg with the prosthesis. Lucky them, the first-aid kit was lying within reach, from when Daniel had opened it earlier, its contents scattered around them. Jack grabbed for the white roll of bandage on the ground, ignoring the aches and pains every sharp movement produced.

The ringing in his ears was lessening, at least in one ear, and reason started to return. If the truck was on the side, where was Peggy? 

Jack twisted his head towards the front of the truck and saw her collapsed over the truck's wheel. She hadn't been thrown from her seat, which was a small blessing, but she appeared to be unconscious. Jack looked back between her unconscious form and Daniel, who was bleeding profusely from the injured leg, pant-leg soaked with dark red blood. Peggy was tough. So was Daniel, but Daniel had taken the brunt of the explosion. With an enormous effort of will, Jack forced himself to stay with the man at his side who definitely required medical attention. Who'd probably saved his life.

Why was it never Jack's moment for a daring rescue? It was just like Daniel to have the instinct to shield someone from a bomb with his own body in the split second he had had to act. He'd have done it for anyone, including apparently an incessant thorn in his side, someone who had fallen unfathomably far in his opinion recently and definitely didn't deserve his sacrifice if there had been time for rational thought.

 _If you bleed out_ , Jack thought obstinately as he unrolled a bandage, _I'll find a way to kick your ass_.

Daniel was still bleeding. Jack looked back over his shoulder at Peggy slumped a the wheel, pulse beating franticly at his temple, breath rattled, eyesight going hazy for a moment. He wiped a hand over his eyes, refocusing on the task of getting the bleeding under control. He would have done anything, been anything, if only she was alright by the time he could get to her. 

His hearing was definitely returning, because he heard Daniel's scratchy voice before he felt him move.

"Jack?" Daniel tried to twist around, and yanked at his pinned leg, letting out a deeply pained groan. The jerk sent a splatter of blood trickling over Jack's fingers and he clamped down on the leg, putting his body-weight into it.

"Don't move," Jack said. "You could have other injuries." He held Daniel's leg down to prevent any more movement even as the other man panted through the pain. Eventually, Daniel could speak again. He said with a scratchy voice:

"I'm wearing a vest."

"What?"

A mumbled, "Peggy made me put it on." Because of course she did, and of course he'd listened, Jack thought sourly. It was as though the memory of the past events slid back into Daniel at that moment. Good thing Jack had been pressing down on Daniel's leg with all his weight, because the man jerked, as if shot, and gasped out: "Peggy."

"Don't move," Jack snarled, having barely distracted himself from the terrifying staccato that was beating against his skull, demanding to know if she was alright. Daniel's frantic trashing wasn't helping him focus on dealing with the immediate problem of Daniel's leg. Jack pressed the leg down, ripping at the material of the pant-leg around where it was already torn, while also figuring out if he could pull the metal piece out of Daniel's leg without injuring him further. The metal embedded into the calf was a jagged, rusted edge which promised a myriad of tetanus injections later, if they got through this. The pant material was soaked-through with blood, and soon so was the piece of bandage Jack pressed against the wound. Daniel's skin under it was slick and dripping red. With their luck it had pierced a vein or even an artery, and moving would make everything worse.

Daniel had lifted his head to where he could see Peggy lying on her side in the driver seat, slumped over the wheel. He twisted back to Jack with frenzied, desperate eyes.

"Check on her. Check Peggy is okay."

"You're bleeding out," Jack grunted, wrapping the gauze around the wound and pressing it in as much as he could, to slow the blood flow. It had to hurt like hell, but Daniel seemed oblivious.

" _Check on Peggy!_ "

Daniel looked like he would do something ridiculous like tear his own leg off if Jack didn't find out immediately, and that put the final nail in the coffin of Jack's ability to set aside the question Peggy's well-being. 

"Press this down," Jack instructed him. Daniel slid to a sort-of four-legged position in which he could reach his own calf and took over from Jack's hands, keeping the bandages in place.

"Check if she's alright," Daniel whispered frantically.

Adrenaline spiking through him and making blood beat thickly in his ears, Jack made it to Peggy's side by using the floor of the truck, now acting as a wall, for support. He had to check her pulse. For a long moment, he physically couldn't make his hand move, a kind of cold shock settling in at the thought that he might not find any. Only Daniel's frantic words, turning into growls behind him, finally convinced Jack to set a pair of clammy fingers to her jugular. 

" _Fuck_ ," Jack said, low, feeling nauseated even as he detected the faint pulse. He shook her shoulder, "Peggy, wake up!" With his other hand he pulled back the hair from her neck, but her skin there looked unblemished. If she had any injuries, they were on the front of her body, or internal.

"How is she?" Then when he didn't get an answer, Daniel cried out, "Fucking Christ... _Jack!_ "

"She's breathing," Jack threw back, distracted for a moment from where he was carefully pulling Peggy's head back from the wheel just a few inches. She had a faint trickle of blood from an inch-long cut on her forehead, but the bump around it looked innocuously small. Knowing he'd never forgive himself if he made things worse by moving her before she was ready, Jack focused instead on waking her up. He slapped her cheek with his healthy hand, sharply, as he'd done a hundred times to soldiers asleep on duty in the trenches.

Peggy mumbled a soft rebuke, before finally opening her eyes. "Daniel?" she murmured, before she saw him. He could see the moment she became fully alert, because her gaze sharpened and she said, lifting herself on an elbow. "Bloody hell...Jack?" She gripped his wrist painfully with a free hand. "Are you hurt?"

"I'm fine," Jack managed, choking on relief at seeing that sharp, questioning gaze focused on him again. "Sousa is fine," he assured her before she could even ask. She was wincing, touching the cut on her forehead with ginger, light fingers. "How's your head?" She didn't get a chance to answer.

"Peggy?" The man in question called from the back and Peggy's head turned quickly to follow that agitated voice. As soon as she found the source, Peggy shakily scrambled out of the seat onto her feet, and pushed past Jack to go to Daniel.

While she dashed over to his side, Daniel's voice shook on the words, "Oh, thank god you're alright." Jack leaned against the side of the truck, breathing carefully around his bruised chest and watched the lovebirds reunite.

"I lost control of the vehicle," Peggy reported briskly, arms wrapped around Daniel in an embrace, white fingers clenched in the material on his back. That vest she'd made him wear likely saved Daniel's life. Another point to Peggy. She asked: "The bag exploded?"

"Booby-trapped," Jack said grimly. "I didn't think Karl was stupid enough to try to kill a federal agent, let alone three."

Daniel lifted his head from Peggy's shoulder, glaring. "You wanted to go with him, _by yourself_. Any other bright ideas?"

"Yes, how about we get that piece of metal out of your only working leg." Jack was currently incapable of holding much against Daniel, seeing as they were all three of them alive and (mostly) in one piece. Whether Daniel's anger with him later took on the form of icy indifference or passionate hatred, at that particular moment Jack couldn't give a damn because at least Daniel was alive for it. And on the heels of that thought came a sharp regret: he'd be leaving them shortly. He might never find out if Daniel's leg healed properly at all. Jack felt his nausea take a turn for the worse.

"You're hurt?" Peggy said instantly disengaging from Daniel's side and started looking Daniel over, eyes narrowing at the bloodied bandage he was pressing to his calf. Then she looked back towards Jack, "How long was I out? Is anyone outside with us?"

Jack felt like a fool, having forgotten to check. For all he knew, Karl had followed them on a private vehicle and was waiting for the right moment to finish them off. Trust Peggy to think of all the contingencies, fresh of what was likely a concussion, while he stood by pointlessly wringing his hands about his own problems.

"I'll go check it out. Get him sorted as best you can," Jack said. Peggy had already gone to look at the metal embedded in Daniel's leg, pulling at it to see if she could get it out without further tearing the muscle of Daniel's calf. 

Jack checked the weapon holstered at his hip, and proceeded to push at the door in the truck's cabin, above him, opening it out. He peaked outside, it came up just to his nose. As far as he could ascertain they were alone on a deserted roadway with empty-looking factory buildings surrounding them on both sides. The road they'd been traveling on looked empty in either direction. The remote industrial area combined with sunset hour on the weekend ensured they were alone.

Climbing out through the opening proved more difficult than Jack had imagined, but he forced himself into the combat mindset and went through with it. His chest gave a sharp burst of pain when he pulled himself up with his hands, climbing outside. A relic of the gunshot he'd survived, no doubt, he'd never feel perfectly healthy again. He tried not to rely too much on the fingers of the hand that was broken, using only that palm for support as he lifted his body out through the opening, and swung his legs over the edge. Once he jumped down to the ground, Jack coughed and spat out the gunk, then went around the truck, examining the twisted back-door. It had taken most of the impact of the blast, bending outward. Jack wasn't sure he could get these ragged remains of the door open on his own, he'd have to get them pushing from the inside. The night was warm, he was sweating through his wool jacket so he took it off and threw it to the dusty ground.

He heard a rustling noise behind him, and swirled around, back to the truck, hand going for his gun.

"Don't shoot!" A man in a security uniform, average height with broad shoulders and dark hair, stood in the gates of the factory on the right. The man explained, hands still in the air, "Saw your truck rolled over and came to help."

"What is it?" came worried from inside the truck; Peggy's voice. "Is somebody there?"

"Federal agents of the SSR." Jack set the tone, so there'd be no doubt who had the authority later. "Who are you?" His hand hovered over the gun, but he could already tell this was one of those blue-collar guards patrolling the buildings at night-time, against possible vandals or kids looking for a thrill. The guy wasn't even armed with anything but a radio.

"Just out on my patrol, sir," The man replied. "Name's Nick. Are there people inside the vehicle? Anyone injured?"

"Help me get her open." Jack motioned for the door to the truck. He called to the two inside, "We've got a security guard here." Then again to Nick, who'd lowered his hands, "Your radio's working?"

"It's short range, sir." Nick motioned towards the dark outline of the building out back. "I've got a working phone inside. I can make a run to call it in."

"Let's get her open first," Jack said, because with the adrenaline fading from his system he felt faint. He leaned against the side of the truck, ignoring the way the dirt stuck to his clothes and just tried to breathe. The slight rattle he felt under the ribs wasn't fading as he'd expected upon waking up. Jack unbuttoned one of the buttons on his shirt with the left hand, peeking down past the t-shirt underneath, at his bare chest. Just a bruise, no blood, but he'd felt a similar kind of rattle in his own breath before, and that had been when he was recovering from a bullet wound. The blemish from that old gunshot was a red and ugly mark on the right side of his chest, an indentation where the bullet had shattered a rib.

Nick was already at the door, pulling at the lever and working to get it open. Jack let his shirt fall away and pushed off from the truck, coming to help. With their combined efforts (though if Jack was being honest, mostly Nick's) they got the twisted metal to unjam and left the lower portion of the door to fall to the ground. With a loud clang, Nick threw the upper portion over the side of the truck, so the door was completely open. In the dark of the vehicle, Jack could see Daniel lying on his back, propped up on his elbows, looking at him, both his legs in front of him. To Jack's surprise the injured leg was free of the metal of the bench sticking into it, and Peggy was bandaging the calf. Spotted with blood, the bandage was nonetheless mostly clean, which meant the bleeding was under control. Peggy though, had a trail of blood above her temple that she hadn't had a chance to deal with yet.

"Get to that phone, man," Jack instructed the guard. "We need an ambulance." The man gave a short nod and took off running in the direction of the building.

"Jack?" Daniel's strange tone made him look up, "Are you okay?"

"Yeah, fine," Jack dismissed it, wondering if they had enough bandages to wrap up that cut on Peggy's forehead. They'd already used so much on Daniel's leg that the small arsenal they'd packed into the truck before this ill-fated mission might have run empty.

"You've got blood on your lips," Daniel said, sounding angry again. He motioned for Jack with a hand, "Come over here," Daniel made as though to rise, but with his bad legs couldn't even do more than sit upright. Jack bristled at the implied order. He was tired of feeling shitty, tired of being pushed around, and he felt like the mental side was affecting his physical state because he couldn't even work up the energy for a good comeback.

"Peggy, take a look at him," Daniel barked, the anger clearly meant for Jack.

She'd looked up from her work tying the bandage, and was studying Jack with an expression he didn't like. Leaning against the truck opening, Jack ran the back of his left hand over his mouth and glanced down. A few spots of blood stained the skin, but he knew he hadn't bitten down on his tongue or anything. He glanced up, seeing Daniel's gaze zeroed in on the results, and on the open button on his chest from Jack's earlier examination, expression thunderous. 

"Sit here," the concern in Peggy's tone was easier to obey than Daniel's order and besides, sitting down seemed like a good idea in general. He slumped down on the current floor of the truck, next to Daniel's boots, stretching his feet out. He wondered if he could lie down.

"I don't feel anything," Jack explained. Sure, his breath rattled a bit but if he'd been badly injured, he would have felt it. He knew how it felt, and that agonizing pain was _nothing_ like what he was feeling now, which was a sort of numbness.

"Fucking hell," Daniel muttered, sounding distant. He sort of shuffled over along the floor, adept at moving his body without involving his legs, and then his hand was clamped down on Jack's right wrist. At least he'd remembered to avoid grabbing for the knuckles, which were broken.

Jack realized his own hands were ice-cold only in comparison. From his other side, Peggy's hand was quickly on his forehead, and it felt like a furnace. Daniel, who'd lost plenty of blood, in contrast was barely warm. Jack knew he wasn't supposed to register this difference, but he'd been so focused on everything else he hadn't tried to analyze his own status. His right hand still hurt with that familiar, jagged pain that broken bones always did. As for his chest, it was hard to say. Jack was certain he'd have known it if he had a broken rib. Although he had a pretty high pain threshold, he couldn't have pulled himself up out of the truck with a pierced lung either. Therefore, the injury was something far more benign and the daze around his reasoning was more a by-product of a rapid series of events than any physical cause. If Jack could root out the part of his brain that seized up in these situations, if he could have expunged that part of himself, he would have done it gladly. But it seemed every time he was stuck in this kind of a nightmare scenario, watching people around him fall, it gave rise to the weakest part of him.

Daniel couldn't understand this; Daniel still looked incensed. When Jack had wished for something more than indifference earlier, he wasn't sure that he'd been in his right mind. It burned him to see that look directed his way. In Daniel's eyes, now, he couldn't be trusted with the simplest things. 

"I swear to God, if you lied about your injuries―" But Daniel's rebuke faded out as Jack simply closed his eyes. He didn't have the energy to defend himself. He hadn't been lying, and if Daniel didn't believe him, well, nothing he could do about that.

"Jack?" Peggy and Daniel said in perfect worried unison.

"I'm awake," he muttered. "'m fine."

"You're coughing up a lung!" Daniel said, with that irritating disbelief, that skeptical, suspicious tone that Jack couldn't help attribute to a lack of confidence in his word.

"Done that, I know what it feels like," Jack opened his eyes so he could stare him down. Now that he didn't have to hold himself upright, he found he did have the strength to push back, like he always could. "I got knocked around a bit in the fall and there's nothing you can do before the ambulance gets here, so _leave it_."

On his other side, Peggy looked at him steadily for a long moment. Meeting her gaze next, Jack dared her to argue with his experience when it came to your lungs filling with blood. He was the resident expert. 

"Alright, but if you feel any worse, don't keep it to yourself."

Jack had been ready for the next argument, prepared to return any aggression with dividend, but her easy acceptance of his word left him only with a jarring sense of relief. Peggy shot Daniel a significant look over Jack's stretched out legs when he seemed about to protest. Jack instantly felt better watching him reconsider and clamp down on whatever it was. Jack didn't want to hear it. 

He had a feeling he was being handled; Peggy had gotten alarmingly good at getting him to come around to her way of thinking by doing stuff that predisposed him in her favour. Though as long as she kept trying, Jack wanted to meet her half-way.

Given some space to think, Jack felt it worth pointing out, "There's a good hour before we get any sort of help. Might be worth seeing what's in those buildings." He motioned to the shadowed factory they'd crashed in front of. The sun was low on the horizon; another half hour and the twilight would turn into dusk.

"I'd rather not move either of you," Peggy said. She glanced over her shoulder onto the empty road they'd come from. Jack had seen her eyes slide that way once or twice so he knew what that was all about. He'd been thinking along the same lines himself, if he was being honest.

"Don't even think of going after him without backup," he said, and watched her surprised blink. That knowing someone thing, it tended to cut both ways. He'd thought about Karl once or twice himself; they weren't pleasant thoughts.

"But it's alright for you to hare off alone?" Daniel said, even though Jack was certain he didn't want Peggy heading off all on her lonesome after Karl, and should have been supporting Jack. Yet instead of expected frustration, Jack felt fondly amused. It was so quintessentially Daniel to try to drive the argument home to absurdity, that dogged determination of his rearing its head. Not letting a bone go; it was what made him a good agent. But he was smart enough to realize that if Karl wanted them dead, he was either lurking out there checking on his handy-work or he was going to ground. Murder of three federal agents, even attempted murder, was a whole different ball-game from the kind of stuff Karl normally got involved in. Which is why Jack was still miffed that Daniel had interfered with his original plan.

"If I'd gone with him when I had the chance, I'd probably know what he was up to."

"Maybe. But if you weren't such an ass earlier, Peggy and I would have been going through that bag when it blew. I prefer my head attached to my body."

Jack blinked at him, startled. Daniel gave a crooked little half-smile, both irritated and fond. 

"We're a team, so we'd better get our act together." Daniel motioned with a hand for Peggy to move closer to where he was sitting. "Let me look at your forehead." She winced, as though reminded of the smudged blood drying at her temple. Jack digested the previous words, trying to squash down on the sparkling hope that lit up inside. He was the one looking for a double meaning now. Daniel had probably meant they had to get out of this mess together, and then go their separate ways. In any case, Jack was leaving for New York, so what did it matter what Daniel wanted?

Daniel tsked when Peggy tilted her bruised forehead his way, stretching out above Jack's feet to where Daniel sat. Peggy closed her eyes under Daniel's gentle fingers. She'd gotten a good knock on the head, but she wasn't slurring her words, and her pupils looked fine ― Jack had studied her for any signs of a concussion since she woke up, and Peggy seemed alright to him. Head-wounds always bled a lot, so the churning in his stomach was rather pointless. Still, Jack looked away towards the road rather than watch her being tended to.

"I'll put a butterfly band-aid on it," Daniel said after a moment. "But you might need stitches. ...It'll probably scar."

The little hitch in his voice when he'd been trying to be so sanguine and confident made Jack look away from the road and towards the man sitting on the other side of him.

Under his scrutiny, Daniel began to flush.

A smirk crossed Jack's lips, but he didn't say anything. Daniel's feelings had crossed from an amusingly diverting crush he'd been nursing back in New York, one that Jack enjoyed teasing him with, into full-blown no-holds-bared love. For all the sickeningly sweet hand-holding and lovelorn looks across the office he'd been privy to lately, the core of their relationship was solid as a rock. Daniel would give his life for Peggy and go happy. Jack couldn't imagine loving someone like that ― it would probably destroy him, just based on his experience so far with people he'd allowed to get under his skin. He could never let it happen.

But Daniel had always been the braver man. Jack looked back towards the road, certain for a moment that he'd seen a flash of headlights, but it was just a trick of his imagination. He glanced back noting the existence of a gun at Daniel's hip. They wouldn't be leaving Daniel defenseless if he and Peggy had to go after Karl.

Once the bandage was applied, Peggy sat back on her heels to the left of Jack. 

"So we've got an hour. Less now." She looked from Daniel to Jack, and back. "If I set out now, I have a chance of apprehending Karl on his way from the factory."

"Assuming he isn't in the wind already," Jack said, trying to recall any get-away vehicle in the front parking lot and coming up empty. "There was no car out front, but he had to have gotten to the factory somehow. He didn't fly there."

"You're forgetting the most important thing," Daniel put in. "None of us is in any shape to go after a man known for setting off explosives."

"I have a slight cut on my forehead, it's hardly the worst I've dealt with for the sake of a job."

Daniel didn't seem appeased. "You were knocked unconscious; it's no rebar through your body, but that's not a ringing endorsement to leap into action. What if you have a concussion? What if you pass out? Neither Jack nor I would be there to back you up."

Jack glanced between the two of them, noting Peggy's look of consternation. Daniel had hit on something with that rebar comment. "Ignoring that disconcerting comparison for now, Peggy won't be alone, because I'll go with her."

"You'll go with Peggy?" Daniel said it like it was the most ridiculous idea.

"Yes."

Daniel looked at him steadily. "With your broken hand and who knows what kind of internal injuries?"

Jack felt a touch of consternation of his own. He felt better now than he had earlier, which had to mean something, didn't it?

Peggy cut in, "Honestly, you two. I'll just make my way there, if Karl is around, I'll walk him back at gun point. Done."

Daniel wouldn't be appeased. "Or he sees you coming and sets off another explosive."

"That's why I have to come, too," Jack said to Peggy, "To watch your back."

Daniel sighed emphatically. "You're missing the point: there's no way you two are heading off after a dangerous, unpredictable criminal without back up." He looked ready to pull rank with them, and Jack had had enough of that already.

"You could have come with us if you hadn't been so careless with your legs," he said, sneering a little, almost hoping to provoke another fight so there'd be no need for consensus and he could do what he liked. He played up the condescension in his voice: "They're not so easily replaceable that you can just throw them in harm's way whenever you feel like it."

"You, on the other hand, are much easier to replace. I usually order my asshole friends from a catalog."

Daniel held his eyes while Jack stared at him, stunned for a moment. Then Daniel glanced skyward, before shutting his eyes, shoulders slumped in surrender. 

"But if you two are so gung-ho about going after Karl, I've got a terrible idea."

  


	6. Chapter 6

 

"This is the worst idea you've ever had," Jack said and swore when he nearly stabbed his thumb as his pen knife slipped on a screw. He returned to his task without a pause.

"Worse than letting Samberly head the science department?" 

Jack grunted. Peggy lifted up her head from a map to point out, "Dr. Samberly has a brilliant mind as long as it is...properly directed." She lowered her head back to the map, moving her flashlight slowly so she could read.

Jack finally loosened the screw, twisting it out impatiently with his fingers, and then hitting the side of the aluminum bracket with the butt of his gun, making it fall off with a loud clang. Daniel yanked and finally, finally pulled the metal bar lose from the wall of the truck where it had been mounted on. He overbalanced and dropped back down onto his rear with an oof.

He didn't waste any time, grabbing his ruined jacket from the floor and wrapping it tightly around the end of the bar. Jack was leaning back against the other wall, watching from half-shut eyes as Daniel secured it with a piece of rope from the emergency kit. He thought there had to be judgment in Jack's eyes for all the time they were spending on getting Daniel ready to walk, but Jack's expression when Daniel cut a glance over to him was unreadable.

Daniel tried not to get too down on himself. Better slow than dead.

He still had his crutch, shoved against the wall behind him, and he'd found ways to work around physical limitations before. All he needed was to find a way not to put as much weight on his leg as he normally did and he would be mobile. This metal bar would do nicely.

Once the makeshift crutch was assembled and ready for a field-test, Daniel stretched out a hand. "Help me up."

He watched the slow way Jack unfolded his long legs from where he'd had them stretched out and crossed in front of him in a leisurely position. Daniel wasn't sure if he saw Jack pale as he stood or if it was the trick of the poor lighting. It had gotten darker, the sun hidden behind the industrial landscape but lighting up the wispy clouds across the sky with bursts of orange and mauve for another couple of minutes. Daniel was now undressed down to his white shirt, as well as the heavy vest underneath that had probably saved his life, and was missing the warmth of the jacket where the cool breeze hit his bare arms. He made sure his hip holster wasn't locked, so the gun was within easy reach. Prepared as always, Peggy had the most weather appropriate dress of them all, her thick wool brown jacket and pants letting her blend in with the surrounding shadows. Jack was only wearing his shirt and thin summer slacks, but he seemed more relaxed as the evening chill set in than he ever looked in the heat of the desert in daytime. 

Peggy timed her task to finish when they were ready, and just as Jack pulled Daniel to his feet and let him settle on his new makeshift crutch, she stood, announcing, "There are no interconnecting cellars between the factories. If Karl is running, he's running through the sole entrance. This gives us a start point." The map was current, they had to trust it. They had known prior to the mission that the road they were on was the only road into town. On the opposite side lay the desert which stretched for hours and a city-dweller like Karl couldn't hope to navigate out there in the dark. Daniel wouldn't venture out without several days worth of supplies. Which meant Karl _had_ to take the only road into L.A. eventually if he planned to return, thus allowing them to intercept him.

"Just so we're clear: if I get a clear shot, I won't waste it," Jack said, leaning idly against the wall while Peggy stuffed the folded map into her bag.

"We've killed for less," Daniel nodded, having decided as much earlier.

Jack turned to look at him as though looking for a rebuke, another shaded meaning in those words. Oblivious at first, Daniel noticed he was being stared at after a moment, and caught Jack's eyes with a puzzled glance of his own. It took him about two seconds to follow the lines of Jack's thinking ― by then Jack had already looked away, hating to be easily understood.

It took Daniel another long moment to find the words he wanted to say. "We're none of us angels."

"Some less so than others," Jack said, tilting his head back so it would fall against the truck's side. The murmured observation seemed completely innocuous on the surface. Daniel ground his teeth.

"Gentlemen, if we bring Karl in alive we still have a shot at getting the truth out of him," Peggy said. "Eyes on the prize." Earlier, she had pocketed a syringe of morphine from the med-kit, with a quick, "Could be useful," and Daniel thought she meant it for Karl. Even now, Peggy was thinking to capture him.

The time it had taken to build himself a makeshift crutch was enough for Nick to run back with the promise that backup from the SSR was on its way. It should be here in an hour's time. They left Nick to guard the broken-down truck and forbade him to follow them. He was only a civilian guard, with a bare minimum of training, not ready for an actual confrontation, but he'd be handy to direct the new arrivals their way if backup got here before the three of them dealt with Karl. 

Nick's eyes tracked the bandage on Peggy's head and slid over to the way Daniel was using both his crutch and a metal rod to keep upright, and his expression grew incredulous. Nick turned to Jack, ostensibly looking for the voice of reason. Past Daniel might have gotten annoyed about that ― of course Jack looked the part of the only person ready to head into danger ― but now rather than feeling stung, he thought of it as a microcosm of their lives at present. And then he pushed past Nick and headed out, Peggy and Jack falling into step at his sides. 

The three of them set off, slowly at first as Daniel kept adjusting his grip on the jacket, softening the biting-cold metal of the rod that kept him upright. Peggy, on his right, was making her way nearly silently, her war-time habits automatic to her in crisis. Jack, striding along on Daniel's left, with nothing but dogged determination to lean on, seemed to be managing his own state, whatever that was. He'd walk until he made it or passed out, out of determination not to show more weakness in front of them.

 _You...moron..._ Daniel said furiously in his own head; but it wasn't as though he didn't understand. He'd moved to another coast of the country once rather than face up to a person that mattered. And that was the crux of it, wasn't it? Unexpectedly, impossibly, what Daniel thought mattered to Jack.

 _Well, how do you like them apples_ , Daniel thought wryly, clutching tighter at his uncomfortable, make-shift crutch and trying to keep up with the other two. Exasperation momentarily overrode his general concern.

There was no way around it. Jack had been terrified for Peggy after the explosion, any idiot could see _that_ , and his expression, when he'd tried to take care of Daniel's injured leg hadn't been any easier. He'd practically forgotten he was injured himself. Jack bluffed and blustered his way through their verbal exchanges, but when it came to his actions, they pointed the way to his true feelings on the matter. They always had.

Daniel had had friendships with other men during the war where they'd fallen into an easy relationship of casual companionship. He'd thought, for a while, that this was the kind of a relationship he wanted with Jack: one where they recognized each other's abilities in the workplace, maybe even went out for a casual lunch every once in a while, and then went home after a productive workday and never thought about it. He'd been certain that's what Jack wanted, too. But he couldn't unsee the fear in Jack's eyes earlier, the way they'd flickered to Peggy's unconscious form so desperately, and the way Jack had yanked them back to look after the injury on Daniel's leg. Daniel wasn't blind to the rapport that had developed between Jack and Peggy after the fiasco with Wilkes was sorted, and especially post shooting, when Peggy had poured so much energy into looking for Jack's shooter. If Jack had any friends, Peggy was that to him. So it meant something that he'd stayed and looked after Daniel, first.

And then, after. Jack had been white faced and pale when he finally got the door of the truck open, beads of sweat on his forehead. Daniel had known something was wrong even before he saw the tell-tale signs of blood smudging his lips. Maybe he should have noticed earlier, but he'd had other things to occupy his mind: once his leg was free with Peggy's help and he could think, he immediately saw how badly Jack was carrying himself.

That he was so seriously hurt had been shocking, and for a while Daniel was occupied with just the medical assessment of his condition, but in the calm moments he'd noticed other things as well. The way Jack reacted to Peggy, taking her orders without complaint, the way he accepted her hands patting him down, when he bristled at every word that came out of Daniel's mouth. 

And it was even as he wracked his brain for some way, _any_ way that he could be of use, that he'd understood. Jack thought he was safe with Peggy. She knew his secret and she had, in some way that only Peggy knew, made peace with it a long time ago. She'd told Daniel once, when Jack was convalescing, that the shooter had tried to "take a good man out", and she'd find them and bring them to justice for that. _A good man?_ Daniel had thought at the time, with what he now had to admit was great doubt.

But that's how Peggy thought of Jack for a while now, and that's how she treated him. And maybe Jack knew that, felt that. 

Daniel had his doubts ― _justified_ , he thought ― and Jack had sensed this too. Earlier just now, Jack had acted like a wounded animal, claws out. His bristling anger and (Daniel could admit it now, in the middle of nowhere, with only a prayer's chance to keep them all safe) Jack's obvious hurt were because he read the judgment in Daniel's eyes. And however that had come about, Jack gave a damn. More than a damn: in light of his recent knowledge, when Daniel thought back to that first moment, when he'd asked "Is it true?" Jack had looked truly terrified for a split second. Daniel had never seen him so scared. He'd put it out of his mind because it hadn't tracked with what he knew about the man; Jack had made him forget all about that flash of fear, incensing him into furious anger instead.

It tracked now.

The realization that had began for him in the basement of the distillery with Karl, that Jack wasn't proud of what he'd said and done, and was actually kind of torn up about it inside, solidified. Jack was so willing to throw himself at danger back there, it was as though any physical damage Karl could do to him scared him less than standing still for Daniel's judgment. It was easier, then, to pretend not to care, to make up some bullshit story about reveling in their foolishness over the Navy Cross, and laughing about pulling the wool over their eyes in private. When in all likelihood, Jack had suffered from his own lies more than any of them.

Daniel too, had wanted to shut the world out when his pride was on the line and Peggy had asked for a rain check on their date, seeming to reject his overture, oh so long ago now. He hadn't had the confidence to believe she meant it as a later, rather than a never. (It was why Daniel had guessed so easily that Jack intended to leave for New York at earliest opportunity. Easier to lick your wounds in private.)

Peggy would probably laugh at the men in her life and their fragile egos, but at least thanks to that common characteristic Daniel had a leg-up on figuring out why Jack rushed eagerly into danger now rather than face him in the quiet safety of the truck, waiting for rescue. By catching Karl he could sublimate the guilt with duty. There was always a destructive edge to his desperation, as there had been with Vernon Masters and the bomb Jack intended to set off.

Daniel wondered, quietly and without voicing any of his doubts aloud, if he wasn't only going along with their plan to catch Karl because he was himself a desperate man. In top form, Peggy could take care of ten men like Karl, with one hand behind her back, without breaking a sweat. Even now, with her forehead one big bruise, Daniel trusted her to know her limits and get through it. Jack though. He was badly hurt. More badly still because he refused to admit it and would undoubtedly push himself too hard at the expense of his health. Daniel knew all about that, too. He wished he could get Jack to stay behind in the truck, but he could hardly threaten to shoot the man a second time.

So instead he crutched after both Peggy and Jack, their gates slowed considerably to keep pace with him, the stump of his leg aching as it rubbed against the prosthesis, and his other leg giving a twang of pain with every step. There was only a few hundred meters left to the gates of the factory where they'd started from, but it felt like an eternity lay ahead.

He kept himself focused by remembering the look in Jack's eyes when Daniel had taunted him into punching his nose. It had been revealing. Jack wasn't enjoying himself, he wasn't secretly chortling over getting Daniel all up in a tizzy. He'd looked bleak and despairing, the mask of carelessness he wrapped himself in cracked in numerous ways so easy to see when they were nose to nose. Then Jack had hurt himself by punching the wall.

If Daniel had known it would happen like that, he would have caught Jack's hand. He hadn't been ready then, needing to see just a bit more under the surface of Jack's glossy front. It shouldn't have surprised him to see a man underneath, with all the emotions and desires a hollow facade couldn't posses. He should have known. 

Daniel didn't make a habit of dwelling on past misdeeds, others or his own. What was done, was done. Sometimes you had to stop thinking and act. He could maintain the status quo and stay back in the truck, wait for the ambulance to arrive and risk never getting a chance to fix anything, or he could try to change things for the better and risk complicating everything further. Daniel had never been afraid of a challenge. He wasn't the staying back kind.

Presently they approached the gravel entrance of the yard. "No new tire tracks," Peggy commented. Karl hadn't flown from the building on a helicopter either, that would have been audible for quite a distance and they would have known.

"Is he planning to sleep here?" Jack commented sarcastically, but they all knew to be on the lookout for more men as they entered the yard. They had the cover of darkness, but it also meant they couldn't see as clearly inside the building. Earlier all the two-plane windows had been closed, but now as Daniel scanned them, all he saw was darkness. The entrance to the factory was lit up by the two yellow lamps. Peggy went ahead and held the door open for Daniel.

As they entered the hallway that he and Jack had traveled along earlier, Daniel saw that nothing had changed. All the same doors that were closed, their quiet footsteps carrying them along, with Peggy going first, Jack and Daniel bringing up the rear. The light was still on in the hallway as well. 

Jack and Daniel exchanged a look. "He's still in the cellar?" Daniel said doubtfully.

Jack shrugged. "I guess we march in there, pick him up, and march out." But he looked uneasy.

"It could all be a trap." Peggy paused at the top of the stairs to the cellar, saying so quietly only they could hear. "Daniel, if you would please watch our backs. Jack, stay by the door at the bottom while I head inside."

"Roger," Daniel and Jack nodded.

Daniel positioned himself out of the way of gunfire as he watched Peggy carefully examine the steps for any hidden wires or traps. Once she headed down, stepping softly, Jack followed, one hand running along the brick wall. On her way down, Peggy picked up one of her tracker bugs from earlier. The two of them paused in front of the doors to the cellar, one on each side, before Peggy nodded at Jack and pushed inside.

"Hey―!" came a shout, and then Peggy's commanding call, "Freeze!"

"Who the hell are you, lady?" That was Karl's voice. Daniel strained to overhear more. Since Jack was maintaining his position out of sight, he could only guess that Peggy had the situation covered. Karl had a gun, but he wouldn't reach for it before Peggy could get off her shot, and she never missed the mark. The question was whether Karl had any other tricks up his sleeve. They hadn't encountered any traps, which meant that if Karl indeed possessed any of those prototypes they wanted to prevent from hitting the black market, they could be with him, in the cellar.

Meanwhile, Peggy was talking, barely audible to Daniel now as the thick brick walls swallowed up the sound, "I'm an Agent of the SSR. You're under arrest for attempted murder of Federal Agents."

"What? You've got the wrong idea―!" the voice cut off. They'd moved further into the cellar. For a moment, Daniel pictured that she was simply cuffing the man, but then Jack went inside after Peggy, disappearing from view. Something was wrong. Their audio equipment lay in broken shards inside their truck, back where they'd left it following the explosion, and the radio waves didn't penetrate inside the cellar anyway.

Not one to lose his head in a crisis, Daniel tapped into his military training so he wouldn't rush after them. He couldn't get down the stairs very well and his main function was to watch their backs and act as a final deterrent for Karl, should he escape. Keeping silent and still was as hard as anything he'd ever done. He strained to hear any noise from inside the cellar, while keeping an eye on the long hallway that had led them here.

"Careful!" came Peggy's shout.  
"What the―!" That was Jack.

There was a commotion and a sound like large water balloon exploding. The cellar door shattered before Daniel's eyes. The thick wood looked like it had simply disintegrated between one blink and the next. It was as though a mine had gone off. Whatever weapon Karl had used on it, it broke up the door into rubble in a single moment. Daniel had to fall back to shield his eyes from any debris that flew outward, mind flashing back to the front for one solid second. He had to catch his breath and force himself into the here and now. Then there was the sound of two gunshots.

 _Peggy!_ he thought, and the next second Karl was rushing through the door, wild-eyed with terror, barreling up the stairs as fast as he could. He was clutching his left shoulder, which was bleeding, and he'd completely missed Daniel coming up from the side, sticking his crutch out to trip him.

Karl barreled down at a full run and actually knocked his head into the wall. He reared up despite the injury, turning with a snarl, his forehead bleeding from the impact, and Daniel had to re-balance himself quickly so he could swing the metal rod and deck him across the temple. Karl crumpled in a heap.

Daniel prodded him with the same rod but the man was out cold.

"Peggy?" he called loudly, dropping down to one knee to cuff Karl. She appeared behind him, holding some kind of a device under one arm that looked like a machine gun, but with a very large round opening out front. She was also drenched in red and smelled strongly of alcohol. Daniel ran his eyes over her, but she didn't appear to be injured.

"You have him contained?" Peggy asked, and Daniel prodded Karl's prone form again with his rod in demonstration. "Good. I knew I could count on you." Daniel tried not to let himself swell up with her praise. Peggy went on, tapping the mean looking gun hanging over her shoulder with a polished red nail, "He used this to shoot some kind of a forced air, but he couldn't control it very well and went flying from the recoil. Jack and I dived behind the wine barrels, and you can guess what happened to them." She looked wryly down at her dark suit, dripping with red wine.

"I was about to ask about the choice of dress." Daniel grinned. "Jack's right behind you?"

She looked down the stairs, as though surprised not to find Jack standing right there. Daniel's mood changed from relief to worry at the same time as her expression grew somber.

"Jack?" he called loudly. 

"Yeah, yeah," came the faint voice from below. Jack was silhouetted in the doorway to the cellar, lit up barely by the weak light yellow light inside. He was leaning heavily against the brick walls, with each hand straight out, propping him up.

"Do you need help?" Peggy asked immediately concerned.

Jack shook his head. He started a slow climb up. "Had to retrieve my gun," he said, but he was panting.

"Jack? You don't look alright," Peggy said. He'd only made it about half-way up the stairs before he had to rest.

Jack looked down at himself. His white shirt was also marked by the red wine, which lent him an eerie look of deep-trauma victims. "Ribs might be broken," he admitted after that slow assessment glance. He started to climb the stairs again, but Peggy had to give him a hand, helping him up the last couple of steps. Up in the hallway alongside them, Jack swayed and leaned heavily against the wall. He was holding an arm across his ribcage. Daniel knew a fair bit about broken ribs: if Jack couldn't get medical help, his lungs could collapse and the air pressure that built up in the chest, and as a result could cut off the blood flow to the heart. Nothing that they could deal with down here. 

Maybe the same thought had already occurred to Jack, because he muttered, downcast, "I should have stayed back."

"You gave Karl a second target," Peggy corrected him. "I'm alive because of you. Do you need a hand to walk?"

"I've got this," Daniel said. "Try to wake up Karl so we can march him to the road."

Peggy looked at the prone form at their feet. 

"I only hit him a little bit," Daniel said.

She crouched and examined the man's shoulder. The bullet had only grazed his arm. Peggy wrapped her hand around it and squeezed, and Karl came up with a yell. He yanked at his hands in surprise, flopping on the ground when the cuffs wouldn't give. 

"Come on up, mate," Peggy said. "Easy now. You're under arrest." She helped Karl up to his knees and slowly to his feet. He seemed disoriented, but essentially capable of walking. Peggy pushed him forward, walking a step behind him with a gun in hand. The hallway was barely wide for two people and Karl was beefy enough to occupy most of it on his own.

Meanwhile, Daniel turned to Jack with a sense of urgency. They had to get him out of the building, where at least medical personnel could easily reach him.

"Don't worry," Jack took shallow breaths. "I've made it out of worse situations." His face creased with pain, breathing laboured.

"I was there," Daniel said shortly.

Jack looked away, instead of answering.

Daniel sighed. "C'mon," he said, butting his shoulder against Jack's, which made the man start and look back at him in surprise. "Lean on me."

"You've got two lame legs," Jack said, kind of breathlessly.

"At least my brain's working," Daniel returned with a crack of a smile. "C'mon, you need to rest. There's a nice ambulance back on the road, and a cot with your name on it."

Peggy had marched Karl to the end of the hallway and stood him there, waiting up on them. The man was muttering under his breath. "You've got the wrong idea, I didn't set off any explosives. Sasha. Sasha must have done it."

Peggy rolled her eyes, but Daniel began to doubt.

"How stupid do you think we are?" Jack said, trying to laugh at the outrage on Karl's face, and only coughing. He continued, even while he put an arm around Daniel's shoulder leaning on him for support and wheezing as he said, "You set us up. You can't wiggle out of this one."

"Don't try to talk," Daniel warned him, feeling the weight of Jack settle along his shoulders. Jack was leaning on him a lot more than Daniel had expected, which was worrying in itself. Louder he called out, "Peggy, get him out of here."

She nodded and pushed Karl to walk ahead, marching the man outside, all through his loud complaints, echoing across the hallway.

"You know, he probably didn't set the bomb." Daniel had been thinking of it, and it came to him now, "Makes no sense for him to hope it went off at the right moment. I think Sasha had done it. Maybe he wanted to blame it on Karl, or maybe he even wanted to get Karl with it." He stared at the slight smirk on Jack's face, at his side. "You guessed?"

"Too bad Sasha's dead, huh?" Jack whispered with gleaming eyes. "If only he could have corroborated that story."

Daniel smirked. They continued their slow progression along the hallway until they reached outside again. They had Karl up on so many charges that not even a snake like him could wiggle out of this one. Your connections could only take you so far. Maybe they could get him to give up his contacts from inside the jail cell. Nothing had gone according to plan, but in the end they at least had the man in custody, and could also give that nifty looking weapon Peggy had taken from Karl to the scientists back at the SSR offices.

"What do you think he was still doing down there?" he wondered, and immediately remembered that he should be encouraging Jack to save his breath. The man was breathing shallowly as they made their slow way down the hallway, one arm over Daniel's shoulders, the other curled up on his chest.

"Burying Sasha." Jack said shortly. "Karl worked alone."

Daniel thought about it. That was the thing about never trusting anyone: you had nobody to help you bury the bodies.

"Back of the cellar's all dug up," Jack said, even as they neared the end of the hallway. There were only a few feet to the door out into the yard. "We might find more there."

"Gotta make it out first." Daniel wished he'd appreciated walking with one good leg more, before this. There really was a lot to be said for not being in constant pain. He winced as a he felt Jack's weight on his side increase. He was sure the man wasn't aware he was putting more and more weight on Daniel as they walked.

"How's the leg?" Jack murmured. Daniel wished he hadn't asked. Everything hurt.

"I've had worse."

"That bad, huh." And again the weight increased. Daniel glanced to the side and saw that Jack had closed his eyes. He was walking blindly, following Daniel's lead. His condition was rapidly deteriorating, he was wilting before Daniel's eyes. Peggy would know to direct help their way, they just had to make it out into the open and they could stop and rest.

"If you pass out on me now," Daniel said, in his best authoritative voice, "I'll kick your ass!"

Jack blinked up at him sleepily, and smiled.

"You're just her type," he said, at a level of a breath. Daniel blinked in confusion. He pushed the door open and dragged Jack through into the fresh night air, turning the words over in his head. If anything he was the aberration, since before him Peggy had loved Steve Rogers, an embodiment of everything heroic and forthright in this world. Daniel just crutched his way from mess to mess, trying to fix things. But Jack was probably delirious from the pain.

Peggy had taken Karl on the long walk through the yard, to the road, but there was no reason for them to follow. Out here, an ambulance could reach Jack. And frankly, Daniel wasn't sure he could walk another step. The passage of time from the cellar to the door had felt endless. His leg was aching where it met the prosthesis, his other leg was an agony of pain from the wound. He made Jack sit on the step to the entrance, and leaned against the nearby wall himself, not sure he could stand up again if he went down. At least he'd gotten Jack out.

"So, I'm forgiven now?" Jack said from his slumped position on the steps.

"What's there to forgive?" Daniel wondered, looking down to find Jack staring out into the darkness of the yard, towards the road. He knew he shouldn't encourage this conversation ― Jack was in a bad way ― but he also knew that it was easier to talk now than it would have been in a normal setting, with both of them at full health. The deeper the pain, the more you were aware of your own mortality. Things like pride couldn't stand up to that idea. So he let Jack talk.

"Don't play dumb, Sousa." Jack squeezed his hands in front of him, stared at them for a moment. "I've lied about my past. If you want to tell everyone the truth about what I am, I can't say I'd stop you."

 _The truth is you've been a terrific pain in the ass_ , Daniel wanted to quip. But it wasn't the complete truth, and it wasn't fair. They'd fought and they'd worked together, and Daniel knew Jack. He'd known to trust him to back Peggy up down in that cellar earlier, unquestionably. Didn't even hesitate to work with him today, if he was being honest. There'd never been a doubt in his mind that Jack would do everything he had to, to carry the job through. But Jack didn't know that. His defensiveness with Daniel finally made sense. The missing puzzle pieces had snapped into place. The entire time he'd known Jack, Jack hadn't been okay. Over the course of this past day Daniel had caught a glimpse of the confusion inside Jack, a sea-saw between ambition and pride, and a heartbreaking vulnerability. All the time they'd been butting heads, Daniel thought he'd known all there was to know and he just never realized how not-okay Jack was.

"You're a good man," Daniel said, making Jack blink up at him, shocked. He was only repeating Peggy's words, but they were the right ones. He felt it now.

"So it's just gone?" Jack said blankly. "I killed those people. Worse, I profited from it. Don't you care?"

"I think you care enough for the both of us, and that's what's really important, isn't it?"

Jack turned it over in his head, nodding. His voice slurred a bit over the next words, "Sometimes, Sousa.... I don't get you at all." He'd shut his eyes, listing.

"Hey, hey! No passing out, remember?"

"Sir, yes, sir," but Jack slumped to the side, eyes closed. He was still awake enough, however, to put a hand out and stop his own downward descent. Daniel recognized the automatic gesture from the front, where they'd all learned to sleep standing up. Jack hadn't sprung into being fully formed as he was now; behind the clean-shaven polished facade lay experiences that shaped a man, memories they both had in common. His heart beat a worrying drum of concern. He glanced down the yard towards the road, wishing for help, feeling each second slip away while Jack's condition worsened.

It was easier to admit, then, that more than being a comrade in arms, Jack was as close to a friend as he had these days. Daniel didn't go as far as pinching himself, but only because he needed both arms to keep himself upright.

"No fainting," he reminded Jack.

"Please," Jack murmured, between shallow breaths, "Just a scratch." He listed further to the side, and this time Daniel had to shuffle over and put his knee out to keep him from falling sideways. Jack either didn't register or didn't care about pressing his shoulder to Daniel's knee because he stayed like that.

"Hey, Jack?"

"...Yeah?"

"I think I hear an ambulance."

Jack didn't answer. Daniel threw the metal rod that served as a second crutch down ― he could stand still without its help for a few minutes, watch him ― and reached to pat the top of Jack's head with a hand, trying to shake him, to bring him back. The fingers of Jack's hand twitched where they lay on the ground, but otherwise he remained completely still, his breaths falling silent.  


 

* * *

 

"I thought Chief Thompson and Chief Sousa didn't get along," one young SSR Agent asked another. The two of them turned their heads to the office of the L.A. Chief, where Jack Thompson sat across the desk from Daniel Sousa. The two men appeared to be involved in a congenial discussion. They'd been at it for a good hour after Thompson had stepped inside and there were no raised voices or slammed doors. What had drawn the attention from the agents outside the Chief's office was a bark of laughter, easily attributable to Chief Sousa.

"Shows what we know," said his partner, before shrugging and going back to work.  


 

* * *

 

**Fin.**

 


End file.
